For weeks and weeks I have been drilling my students “More water! More water! Drop the paint into the water and let it ooze, swirl and flow….”
Well this project is the complete opposite of that.
In order to get those thin washes of color, you have to work very quickly and with very little water in order to not disturb the layer of paint below it.
So, I called this class the “STICK IT TO MARY CLASS”. Because everyone would not have to hear my water nagging and they could possibly provide proof that you could create a watercolor painting not using the wet-on-wet painting method. I so wanted to prove my class wrong!
Guess what? Doing a painting fairly dry with quick layering strokes or glazing – works (however, I am not admitting that to my students!).
So here is how I laid out this project:
First you lay-out a very loose sketch. Pretty much, make shapes for where different colors or subject-matter will be.
Second is color-blocking. This very much reminds me of old fashioned paint-by-numbers. You block your entire image with very simple, very light areas of color. For instance, the yellow flower has shadows in it, but for color-blocking purposes you would simply add a light shade of yellow. All those details will be GLAZED in later. Another example of this is the splotch of light purple in the upper left quadrant. It is flat and light. It marks the space where I will later add purple painted details.
Third, you begin to move around the painting adding quick layers of color. For me, I like to move around and apply the darkest shadows. The color-blocking step already established my lights. So, if I then add the darkest darks, I can easily establish the medium tones later. In the top right corner in the left-hand picture you can see a block of orange. In the right-hand photo, you can see how I added the shadows between the flower petals to make that part of the image come alive. It went from orange splotch to orange flower petals.
Pretty much, you keep adding layer upon layer, detail upon detail, until you feel like the image is complete in your eyes.
Here’s another example:
Can you see how the left-side image looks flat, blocked and like a paint-by number? Do you see how much dimension you can create by adding more and more layers of color?
Here are some of my students. They are at the color-blocking paint-by-number-looking stage…
I can’t wait to see how their paintings come out.
I hate to admit this, but as soon as our classes were over, I rushed home to finish my demos. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I just couldn’t resist adding more and more layers. I didn’t get up from my seat until I had finished both paintings. Secretly, I found this glazing method extremely addicting :)
In a nutshell, this is not how I normally paint. I like to use tons of water on my paper so that I get chemistry experiments of paint combining in strange watery ways. However, I am TOTALLY going to incorporate more of this glazing into my work. I think the quick movement provided me amazing opportunities to add way more colors than I ever would have, the normal way I paint. I will definitely be chasing this freedom in future paintings.
In fact, I’ve just started another painting today :)
Be Creative Mary 